Patriotic passports

My first passport, 21 years ago!

Kelly and I took the kids to the post office this week to get their passports renewed. We were hoping to have them in time for our upcoming trip to Orcas Island, so that if we had some time we could cross the strait and see what it’s like to riot in Vancouver. Okay, not really, but it’s always good to have an up-to-date passport.

While we were waiting for the paperwork to get done, I recalled that it was about this time of year that I got my first passport. It was July 5th, 1990 and I was serving in the Navy during that time – my ship, the USS Elliot (DD-967), was visiting Hong Kong that week. I remember the humor of celebrating America’s Independence Day while docked in a British colony. Continue reading →

Fungal infections follow tornado

Wow. I never would’ve guessed this. Here’s a fascinating tidbit from WRAL meteorologist Kim Deaner on the WRAL WeatherCenter blog.

Tornadoes can be deadly and destroy lives and homes with their violent winds, but did you know that they also have the potential to kill you in a way you would least expect?

Victims of the massive Joplin, Missouri, tornado are finding this out now along with the rest of the world. Days after the EF5 tornado devastated the town, people started getting sick and dying from a rare fungus. The CDC is now investigating how this fungus appeared and why it is killing already wounded victims of the tornado. To date, at least twelve people have been sickened with the fungus, and three people have died due to their injuries from the tornado and the fungus.

via Fungal infections follow tornado as threat :: WRAL.com.

Are you a nerd or a geek?

CNN takes a look at the geek vs. nerd debate:

Musical satirist and pop culture icon ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic said he thinks of himself as a nerd in general, but is a geek about a few things.

“To me, a nerd is somebody that would be intelligent perhaps to the point of being a bit socially awkward and a geek is somebody that is not necessarily intelligent, usually they are, but they are usually savant-like experts in a particular subject. I know the standard definition of a geek is a person that bites the heads off birds, but I don’t think that’s been in use for quite some time. But there are certainly nerds that are geeks and geeks that are nerds. There are also pure geeks and pure nerds,” Yankovic said.

via Are you a nerd or a geek? – CNN.com.

The power of mentors

We took the kids to the neighborhood pool on Sunday and Hallie happened to meet a classmate there from one of her earlier grades. He’s an African-American boy who came to the pool with his grandfather and his cousins. These kids all were hanging around the shallow end and seemed to be hungry for some activity, so in between games of tag with my own kids, I wandered over to them and said hello.

Hallie’s classmate was friendly and wanted to play tag, too, but during one such tagging expedition he abruptly stopped.

“I can’t go that far,” he said solemnly. “I can’t swim.”

“Well,” I said. “You can float, can’t you?”
Continue reading →

Michelle Young jury deadlocked

It looks like the jury in the Michelle Young murder case is stuck. I saw the Tweets on a note the jury passed to the judge and figured the jury has not been able to reach a verdict.

I thought at first that Jason Young was probably guilty. After seeing the route that Jason Young was supposed to have traveled between Raleigh and central Virginia were he were the murderer and the lack of any blood evidence in his vehicle, I have a difficult time believing he did the deed. Could he have done it? Maybe, but it seems unlikely he could’ve pulled it off.

But who killed Michelle Young? I’m not sure. I don’t know who else other than Jason Young might have had the anger to do this. But Jason Young can’t be in two places at once (or time travel). So I’m not surprised that the jury is hung.

I feel for the family of all involved, especially little Cassidy who has lost her mother.

The jury foreman in the first-degree murder trial of Jason Young sent a note to the judge Monday morning, telling him that the jury is "immovably hung."

But Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens instructed jurors to return to the jury room to continue deliberating.

“I want you to continue to deliberate, and if you find yourself unable to resolve the matter unanimously, then you will advise me,” Stephens said.

Jurors spent about two hours Monday morning before sending the note to Stephens.

via Jury ‘immovably hung’ in Jason Young murder trial :: WRAL.com.

Crispy lawns

The Triangle is in another drought, with little substantial rain falling in the last few weeks (ever since I planted the garden, it seems. Hmm). The lawns around the neighborhood are all crispy brown. While I wish we had some rain to refresh those lawns, I’m very happy to see that everyone is resisting the urge to water their wilting grass because it means folks are conserving water.

Because of everyone’s efforts, Raleigh’s main fresh water reservoir, Falls Lake, is at 251.2 feet, just four inches below full. This is in contrast to December 2007, when Falls Lake dropped to a record low of 242.62 feet, or almost nine feet below full.

I know the city’s public utilities department has conflicting goals of conserving water and selling it (as the Raleigh Public Record so eloquently pointed out), but it’s hard to sell something you don’t have. Although the area lawns might taking a beating, at least the city is in good shape to weather this drought.

Update 2:30 PM: Rain! Glorious rain! Bucketsfull! Half an inch so far in the past half-hour! It’s wonderful!

Giving Turntable a spin

Friday gave me my first look at a new music service called Turntable. It’s a service where you and up to five of your friends can take turns DJ-ing a music channel (or “room”). Participants in the room can vote whether a song is “lame” or “awesome” and the vote determines whether the song stays in rotation. They can also share real-time comments in a chat window.

It’s an intriguing idea, but how does it work in practice? It works well if you like hiring schizophrenics to DJ your parties! There were some cool tunes I heard that I wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed to, but the music flow soon became a jumbled mess.
Continue reading →

Paul Jones’s #noemail experience

Paul Jones, now available email-free!


My friend and local Internet guru Paul Jones (the real one – accept no substitutes) has just completed three weeks of ignoring his email. No, he’s not stranded on some desert island and, no, he’s not ignoring people – he’s simply convinced that there are better ways to communicate than email. Paul is harnessing the power of social networking tools (Twitter, blogs, RSS, IRC, instant messenger), smartphones, and the old-fashioned telephone to fill the gap left by email.

I’ve been following Paul’s progress on this off and on but I don’t recall hearing of any “finish line” in this particular endeavor. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Paul leaves email behind for good. Maybe he has a point, and email is a wheezing relic from the past?

You can follow all of Paul’s “noemail” trials and tribulations (including some insightful commentary) on Paul’s blog.

Rats fed HFCS got fatter than rats fed sugar

Here’s an interesting Princeton study. That Big Gulp will kill ya, I tell ya.

In results published online Feb. 26 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

via Princeton University – A sweet problem: Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain.

Weather radio not alerting

Since the April 16th tornado, I’ve been paying close attention to my weather radio when storms are approaching. The problem is that it hasn’t sounded for anything in weeks. I tried connecting my radio to my attic antenna (aimed directly at the WXL58 tower in Chapel Hill) but it didn’t seem to help.

I decided to pay close attention to my radio during today’s scheduled weekly test broadcast. When noon came and went without my radio sounding, I emailed the National Weather Service with a report that the alert system may be in the fritz. My friend Greg has also noted a lack of alarms lately, too, so I’m thinking it may not be just my radio.

Should I hear back from the folks at the NWS, I’ll let you know.